Day: March 16, 2023

From polarbearscience

The main birthing period for NW Atlantic harp seals has arrived. Local populations of ringed and bearded seal pups will soon follow but in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in eastern Canada, the pupping season for harp seals that is usually in progress by this time has likely been redirected north due to lack of suitable ice conditions. Sea ice off Labrador and Newfoundland is in good condition and this is where the vast majority of the global population go to give birth (ca. 7.6 million vs. 1.5 million in the White Sea and 434,000 in east Greenland).

Timing of births

The timing sequence for births is White Sea, Russia (late February to mid-March); Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada, aka the “Gulf” (traditionally early March, now 26 February, see below); Labrador/Newfoundland, Canada aka the “Front” (mid to late March, mean 12 March); East Greenland around Jan Mayen Island, aka the “West Ice” (late March to early April), see the map below. The Jan Mayen/West Ice region is the furthest north that harp seals pup, breed and moult, and thus the last in the season for this species (Stenson et al. 2020). Current sea ice map here.

However, it appears that this traditional timing has changed in the Gulf to coincide with changing ice conditions. According to the report by Mike Hammill and colleagues in 2021 (pg. 21, my bold), the time when the first seals give birth in the season advanced by one week between 2009-2019:

In the meantime, as ice cover declines, it is predicted that the timing and duration of peak ice will also change with a shift in peak ice to later dates and earlier breakup. In the Gulf the appearance of first births has advanced by one week, from 28 to 21 February, over the last decade (Hammill unpublished). It will be interesting to see if pupping at the Front also advances as the ice declines in that area as well.

Consequently, the mean date of birth in the Gulf has also shifted forward from March 5 to February 26 (Stenson et al. 2020:3). However, I have not heard any seal specialist mention this evidence of evolutionary adaptation to the media when discussing this population.

This is what the IUCN Red List (Kovacs 2015) says about the newborn seals that polar bears feed upon (references removed for easier reading, see original here):

“Pups are born on the open, free-floating, pack ice and nursed for 12 days, during which time they gain weight at about 2.2 kg per day. To minimize energy expenditure, most pups are sedentary for the first month; some are so immobile that they melt into the ice beneath them, forming ice “cradles”.

Pups are referred to as “whitecoats” because they are born with an insulating coat of white lanugo. Lactating females spend up to 85% of their time in the water, depending on the weather. Towards the end of lactation, females come into oestrus and mate.

Weaned pups remain on the ice for up to six weeks, losing up to 50% of their weight before entering the water to feed.”

This means that harp seal pups in each discrete area of the eastern Arctic are available on the sea ice as easy prey for polar bears for about 8 weeks, although during the first few days they would provide little in the way of fat calories. Distracted adults of both sexes may also be at risk of becoming a polar bear meal during this short period.

Contrary to a report in January by the CBC (19 January 2023, ‘It’s the season for seal pups, and they might show up in weird places’) which implies that harp seals will have their pups on beaches if sea ice is not available, biologists say this is not the case.

In poor ice years, like 2020 and 2021, harp seals move east to the Front to give birth on the pack ice off Newfoundland and Labrador; in 2017 (a poor ice year in the Gulf), there were no reports of births on land (Hammill et al. 2021:18). However, a few pups born on the ice that have been prematurely dumped into the sea, by storms or disintegration of ice, may be washed onto beaches while still alive.

Harp seal numbers in eastern Canada are still increasing (from 7.6 million in 2017) and are predicted to continue doing so (up to > 9 million) until about 2035 (Hammill et al. 2021). A decline in abundance after that point is based on an assumption, which may or may not turn out to be correct, that sea ice in the Labrador Sea (i.e. the Front) will decline continuously after 2040 or so, see graph below from the Hammill report.

Sea ice conditions in the Gulf

About as much ice as there was last year about this time but it’s still not very thick. Thin first year ice (ca. 50cm thick, light green on the chart below for the week of 27 February) is best for whelping females, so virtually all harps that may once have given birth in the Gulf will have moved north to the Front:

Sea ice conditions at the Front

For the week of 6 March 2023, the ice has set up nicely at the Front for seal births: perfect conditions in the south around Newfoundland (light green), the northern Gulf around the Strait of Belle Isle, and along the Labrador coast, especially for those individuals that give birth early in the season:

If we look at daily ice charts for this week, the dynamic pack ice at the Front has spread out and has compacted along the coast due to winds from the north, which is not unusual:

With seals come bears

And of course, with the seals come the polar bears, which began making regular appearances in coastal communities in the Front last week and continued this week.

St. Carol, northern Newfoundland 7 March 2023.

Photo below from the small community of St. Lewis on the southern Labrador coast, 13 March.

References

Hammill, M.O., Stenson, G.B., Mosnier, A. and Doniol-Valcroze, T. 2021. Trends in abundance of harp seals, Pagophilus groenlandicus, in the Northwest Atlantic, 1952-2019. Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS). Research Document 2021/006.

Kovacs, K.M. 2015. Pagophilus groenlandicus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2015: e.T41671A45231087. http://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2015-4.RLTS.T41671A45231087.en

Stenson, G.B., Haug, T., and Hammill, M.O. 2020. Harp seals: Monitors of change in differing ecosystems. Frontiers in Marine Science 7:569258. Open access.

From Climate Scepticism

By SCEPTICUS

To justify the claim that Western countries must cut their CO₂ emissions, the following statements must all be true:

1. The world is warming

2. Humanity is the cause

3. It’s dangerous

4. We can fix it  

Therefore, to destroy the claim, you only have to falsify one of them. But which one? 

Sceptics commonly choose 1, 2 or 3 – largely because they feel strongly about the issues involved. But that’s a mistake: in attempting to falsify any of these, you get bogged down in areas of science where, however learned you may be and however cogent and valid your arguments, you end up with ‚my experts vs. your experts‘, where minds cannot be changed and where you may well be accused of being a ‘denier’ or an advocate for fossil fuel interests.

That’s what’s been happening for years. And it’s why sceptics are getting nowhere and why Western governments are continuing to pursue their disastrous climate policies. 

So you’re left with item 4. And this is different: now you can base your position, not on disputed scientific evidence but on easily verifiable fact: the non-Western world is the source of about 75% of global emissions; a percentage that’s increasing.

And that’s because the overriding and understandable priority of billions of poor people in Asia, Africa and South America is to provide clean water, fresh food, shelter, healthcare and education for their children, to improve overall quality of life and to achieve prosperity.

This requires abundant, affordable, available and reliable energy – i.e. gas, coal and oil. These people want what we in the West already have, so there’s no reason to think that attitude is going to change for a long time – if ever. There’s nothing we can do about it. So item 4 is falsified.

My advice to sceptics: ignore items 1, 2 and 3 and focus on 4. 

Note: the useful four statements concept was inspired by this article in the Australian Spectator. My thanks.

Robin Guenier – March 2023

From NoTricksZone

By P Gosselin on 14. March 2023

The more Germany tries to wean itself off fossil fuels, the more it seems to rely on them – especially coal. 

Germany’s online Blackout News here reports: “Coal again the most important energy source in power generation”.

As Germany continues to move ahead and shut down its nuclear power plants, leaders are realizing that coal as an energy source for electricity is unavoidable and without alternative.

Coal has risen to 33% share

“As a result, the share of coal-fired power plants in electricity generation has risen to a good 33 percent,” reports Blackout News, citing Der Spiegel. “Last year, coal thus became the most important energy source for electricity generation in Germany by a growing margin.”

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the then German government panicked and moved to shut down its remaining fleet of nuclear power plants. The last three plants are scheduled to go offline on April 15th, after having their operating time extended earlier this year in order to get the country through the winter. This has made Germany increasingly reliant on coal.

The sabotage of the Nordstream II gas pipeline, a major artery supplying energy to Europe, has also made coal even more crucial in keeping the lights on in Germany and the rest of Europe.

14 coal-fired power plants were put back into operation

What’s surprising is that Germany vowed not long ago to do away with coal power, in a bid to ward off “dangerous global warming”. Yet:

“Last summer, a total of 14 coal-fired power plants and one petroleum-fired power plant were put back into operation or, contrary to original plans, were not shut down in order to counteract the acute gas crisis,” reports Blackout News, citing the German tagesschau. “These measures were necessary to prevent the looming electricity shortage in Germany. In addition, five lignite-fired units from the so-called supply reserve remained on the grid, contrary to the planned shutdown.”

In a nutshell: there’s no way to eliminate coal

Citing the Federal Statistical Office, in 2022, one third (33.3 percent) of the electricity fed into the grid in Germany came from coal-fired power plants, a rise of 8.4 percent. Wind energy, despite having a high level of installed capacity, supplied just 24.1 percent, followed by solar with 10.6 percent. Nuclear power’s share halved in 2022, accounting for only 6.4 percent of the electricity fed into the grid.

The more Germany tries to wean itself off fossil fuels, the more it seems to rely on them – especially coal. 

Germany’s online Blackout News here reports: “Coal again the most important energy source in power generation”.

As Germany continues to move ahead and shut down its nuclear power plants, leaders are realizing that coal as an energy source for electricity is unavoidable and without alternative.

Coal has risen to 33% share

“As a result, the share of coal-fired power plants in electricity generation has risen to a good 33 percent,” reports Blackout News, citing Der Spiegel. “Last year, coal thus became the most important energy source for electricity generation in Germany by a growing margin.”

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the then German government panicked and moved to shut down its remaining fleet of nuclear power plants. The last three plants are scheduled to go offline on April 15th, after having their operating time extended earlier this year in order to get the country through the winter. This has made Germany increasingly reliant on coal.

The sabotage of the Nordstream II gas pipeline, a major artery supplying energy to Europe, has also made coal even more crucial in keeping the lights on in Germany and the rest of Europe.

14 coal-fired power plants were put back into operation

What’s surprising is that Germany vowed not long ago to do away with coal power, in a bid to ward off “dangerous global warming”. Yet:

“Last summer, a total of 14 coal-fired power plants and one petroleum-fired power plant were put back into operation or, contrary to original plans, were not shut down in order to counteract the acute gas crisis,” reports Blackout News, citing the German tagesschau. “These measures were necessary to prevent the looming electricity shortage in Germany. In addition, five lignite-fired units from the so-called supply reserve remained on the grid, contrary to the planned shutdown.”

In a nutshell: there’s no way to eliminate coal

Citing the Federal Statistical Office, in 2022, one third (33.3 percent) of the electricity fed into the grid in Germany came from coal-fired power plants, a rise of 8.4 percent. Wind energy, despite having a high level of installed capacity, supplied just 24.1 percent, followed by solar with 10.6 percent. Nuclear power’s share halved in 2022, accounting for only 6.4 percent of the electricity fed into the grid.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

I don’t believe even Jennifer Granholm can be this deluded:

U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm claimed Friday that Americans can “learn from what China is doing” in combating climate change.

During an interview at the annual SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, Granholm sang the praises of China for its efforts to reduce climate change, claiming the country is actually “very sensitive” about the issue, more so than the United States.

Granholm made these claims despite the fact that China recently hit its coal-production record last year. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, “55% of China’s energy” now comes from fossil fuel “compared to 11% in the U.S.”

She then praised China’s climate change efforts, saying, “But, I think China has done — has been very sensitive, and has actually invested a lot in their solutions, to achieve their goals.”

Granholm added, “So we’re — we’re hopeful that, you know, we can all learn from what China is doing.”

The secretary also noted, “the amount of money that they’re investing in clean energy is actually, you know, encouraging.”

https://www.foxnews.com/media/energy-secretary-granholm-claims-us-learn-china-climate-change

Granholm is Energy Secretary in arguably one of the worst Administrations in US history. Like most of Biden’s cabinet, she is utterly unfit for her job. But even she must surely be aware of the actual data, which shows that the contribution of wind and solar in China is tiny, and has been swamped by the increase in fossil fuel consumption in recent years.

BP Energy Review

So why is she spouting such nonsense?

It is a sad fact that the Biden administration has been sucking up to China for the last two years. Biden himself, John Kerry, Anthony Blinken and others all seem afraid to say anything critical about the country, whether about climate change, the Uighers, Taiwan or spy balloons.

And China will carry on treating them all like the fools they are.

From CFACT

By Rupert Darwall 

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) occurred just days after Congress passed the Braun-Barr resolution, which overturns the Biden administration’s “Prudence and Loyalty” rule and its encouragement of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing by pension managers under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). The timing could hardly be more instructive. The Prudence and Loyalty rule, the White House had recently argued in its defense, “reflects what successful marketplace investors already know – there is an extensive body of evidence that environmental, social, and governance factors can have material impacts on certain markets, industries, and companies.”

How true. SVB’s bankruptcy shows that focusing on ESG factors can indeed be material to investment performance, but not in the way that the Biden administration believes.

SVB reeked of ESG. “SVB’s Executive Committee, chaired by CEO Greg Becker, is responsible for oversight of our ESG program and providing insight on ESG risks and opportunities related to SVB’s business,” the bank’s ESG governance program states. Chief marketing and strategy officer Michelle Draper was responsible for ensuring that ESG was integrated into SVB’s business strategy, indicating that ESG was more about window-dressing for clients than anything to do with the robustness of the bank’s business model.

The now-failed bank checked all the ESG boxes. Forty-five percent of its board directors were women. Its Community Reinvestment Act plan was accorded an outstanding accolade. Nine pages of its ESG report are taken up with its World Economic Forum (WEF) Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics. On the WEF dignity and equality metric, SVB responded that the bank “benefits from a diverse workforce and aims to continue to increase diverse representation at all levels of the company.” It boasts of more than halving its greenhouse gas emissions. “SVB recognizes the significant societal, ecological and economic threats of climate change,” its 2021 climate-related disclosure report said.

Sensitivity about the purported economic threat posed by climate change seems to have been inversely correlated with awareness of the changing financial climate caused by inflation and rising interest rates and the havoc that might wreak on its balance sheet and liquidity. “Everyone, except SVB management it seems, knew interest rates were heading up,” observed the Wall Street Journal’s Andy Kessler. “Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has been shouting this from the mountain tops.” Astonishingly, SVB had been operating without a chief risk officer for its last nine months before it went under. According to a report in the International Business Times, the head of financial risk management for SVB’s U.K. division introduced initiatives including the organization’s first month-long Pride campaign and a blog emphasizing mental-health awareness for LGBTQ youth.

ESG has a precursor from decades earlier: CSR, which stood for corporate social responsibility. While engaged in a massive business fraud, Enron was giving millions of dollars to charity, topping CSR rankings, and scooping upprestigious awards, including the Council on Economic Priorities’ Corporate Conscience Award and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Protection Award. What Enron and now SVB show is that distracting investors from core business drivers by throwing out bundles of virtue-signaling chaff is a strong signal that’s something is probably amiss – in the case of Enron, that it was fraudulently making up its financial numbers; in the case of SBV, that rising interest rates threatened its solvency and sustainability.

There is a correlation here to investment managers running other people’s money. Under ERISA, retirement savings must be invested for the exclusive purpose of providing retirement benefits. With the rise in fashion for ESG investing and its dubious claim of “doing well by doing good,” the Trump administration decided that the Labor Department needed to clarify application of the law’s intent that the sole objective of pension investing is to do well by seeking to maximize risk-adjusted returns. The result was a 2020 rule that skilfully clarified the legal duties of investment fiduciaries. Far from preventing them from considering ESG among other factors, as the Biden administration subsequently alleged, the 2020 rule doesn’t even mention ESG. Instead, it de-fanged ESG by requiring that fiduciaries consider only pecuniary factors in selecting plan investments. If a factor doesn’t make the cut as pecuniary, it should not be taken into consideration.

This, the Biden administration claimed, had a chilling effect on incorporating ESG, especially climate factors, into investment decisions – as well it should. Most of what constitutes ESG is investment chaff. This represented an obstacle to the administration’s climate-policy ambitions. In May 2021, President Biden signed an executive order to use corporate climate-risk disclosure to help achieve its aim of decarbonizing the economy by 2050. Under White House instruction, in October 2021, the Labor Department rushed out a draft rule that appeared to suggest that fiduciaries should consider climate and other ESG factors in making investment decisions. Together with other provisions, it would have driven a coach and horses through ERISA. For this reason, it stood little chance of surviving inevitable legal challenge.

The final rule, which the Braun-Barr resolution nullifies – barring a presidential veto –substantially weakens the earlier draft but inevitably retains the climate tilt, stating that investment decisions must be based on factors that fiduciaries reasonably determine are relevant to a risk-and-return analysis that “may include” the economic effects of climate change and other ESG factors. The rule makes 161 mentions of climate or climate change. Prudence and loyalty this isn’t. The rule’s aim is facilitating the use of retiree savings in progressives’ fight against climate change.

One lesson of SVB’s collapse is the critical importance for business to focus on the essential. Harnessing data on the stock performance of companies taking positions across the political spectrum – including not taking a position at all – Michael Edleson and Andy Puzder conclude that companies that focus on profits outperform companies that don’t. “As a corollary,” they add, “it seems obvious that asset managers won’t maximize shareholder returns if that isn’t their focus.”

In the case of retiree plan managers covered by ERISA, the law requires that financial performance be their sole objective. Not only does the Biden administration rule give investment managers cause to find ways of circumventing the express intent of Congress when it enacted ERISA; it’s also very likely that it would lead to worse investment performance, reducing retiree incomes and weakening America’s financial health. In the aftermath of SVB’s demise and the case study of how management’s obsession with ESG put up red flags about its negligent risk management and its sustainability as a business, Congress’s decision to nullify the new rule is sound. Conversely, a veto would demonstrate just where the president’s priorities really lie.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Author

• Rupert Darwall
• Rupert Darwall is a Senior Fellow at the RealClear Foundation.

From Watts Up With That?

Originally published March 13th in Spectator Australia

Brian Wawn

Current energy policy in Australia is based on the arguments that greenhouse-gas emissions should be sharply reduced and that, as part of this, renewable energy should replace coal and gas for electricity generation.

Both these arguments should be challenged and a fresh approach taken to Australian energy policy.

Scientists agree that greenhouse-gas emissions contribute to global warming, but are they the major driver of warming?

This issue is hotly contested, with natural climate variations an important issue also to be considered.

Natural variations in warming and cooling are clear from the past few thousand years and are almost certainly still with us today. Although not fully understood, they are probably solar in origin.

For example, there were global warming and cooling periods in Roman times (around 250 BC to 400 AD) and in Medieval times (around 950 to 1250 AD).

In Roman and Medieval times, global temperatures increased (before subsequently falling) as much as they have in our time – a little over 1-degree centigrade.

Following 1300 AD, global temperatures declined overall until the 1800s, but with cycles of increases and decreases superimposed on the trend.

Greenhouse-gas emissions, which only started growing after 1850, are unrelated to these past temperature changes.

Today, it is arguable that natural variations in warming and cooling have a much larger impact on global temperatures than emissions.

If so, reducing emissions will make little difference to global temperatures in the 21st century.

The government’s relentless pursuit of lower emissions is inconsistent with these yet-to-be-resolved issues.

Current energy policy (Net Zero emissions by 2050) entails that we eventually rely entirely on renewable energy – notably wind and solar farms – for electricity.

However, this will require battery support that, for the country as a whole or even one state, will be impossibly expensive.

To illustrate, the large Tesla battery installed in South Australia in 2017 at a cost of $100 million would supply electricity for that state for less than half-an-hour.

On this basis, to supply Australia with electricity solely from batteries for, say, a week would require batteries costing over $500 billion.

This is nearly as much as total federal government expenditure last financial year.

And even a week would be less than that required to cover periods of weak or non-existent wind and solar energy.

Furthermore, wind and solar energy are proving expensive, with electricity prices in Australia for consumers having tripled since 2000, moving from among the lowest in the world to among the highest.

Reasons for this include:

• The high transmission costs typically associated with renewables.
• The need to backup renewables with coal or gas plants operating at below capacity and thus with high unit costs.
• The costs required to maintain frequency stability in the grid.

Renewable energy would be a niche industry, but for federal and state government subsidies of $6-8 billion per year. These subsidies will only increase if renewable energy becomes increasingly important.

It is not a good way forward.

Here is a proposed change in direction.

First, phase out all subsidies for renewable energy over (say) three years. Adopt the principle that the energy industry should operate on a competitive basis, with no particular technology favoured by government.

Second, use the resulting savings to establish two new major research organisations in Australia.

One of these will look into new technology for generating reliable, low-cost electricity (The Electricity Forum). This means technology to compete successfully with coal.

Such technology will not only be valuable in itself, but will also meet much better than renewables the concerns of those worried about fossil fuels.

The other organisation will be devoted to furthering our understanding of climate science (The Climate Forum). This means addressing the question: to what extent should we be concerned by greenhouse-gas emissions?

Both organisations have the potential to become world leaders in their field. This is a much more exciting use of $6-8 billion per year than building ever more wind and solar farms.

Third, remove all impediments to new coal and gas developments in Australia (apart from those arising from the normal planning process).

Fourth, open-up discussion of nuclear power in Australia, possibly through a royal commission on the issue. Should sufficient community agreement on nuclear power be achieved, plan for the first commercial nuclear plant to be developed in the 2030s.

Possible location: the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, which has the skilled staff and transmission infrastructure to support an economically-efficient nuclear power plant.

And which is being decimated by the Labor-induced closure and planned closures of four major coal-fired power plants: Hazelwood (2017), Yallourn (2028) and Loy Yang A and Loy Yang B (early 2030s).

Adoption of these proposals will not end the ‘climate wars’, as they will be strongly opposed by some, including the growing number of organisations and individuals with a strong vested interest in renewable energy.

But the proposals offer Australia the long-term possibility of reliable, low-cost electricity and other forms of energy. And the possibility of hosting two world-leading research organisations in the climate and energy fields.

Current policy does not offer these possibilities.

Brian Wawn is a director of Energy Bureau, a non-profit organisation committed to stimulating discussion in Australia of climate and related-energy issues.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

Companies running the UK’s three remaining coal-fired power stations have told Sky News that they will not be able to commit to new emergency power contracts next winter, despite a government request to do so.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has asked the National Grid to extend this winter’s contingency coal contracts through to the end of next winter.

Coal provides a tiny proportion of the UK’s electricity – just 2% – but it remains a critical tool for the National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO), which is responsible for keeping the lights on.

One energy analyst said we are “sleepwalking into a capacity crunch”.

At the moment five coal units in three power stations are on standby to help avoid blackouts on very cold, very still days where wind power is limited; Drax, EDF’s West Burton A and Uniper’s Ratcliffe.

West Burton was fired up earlier this month during a cold snap when the National Grid became concerned that demand would outstrip supply.

But Drax and EDF have told Sky News that the arrangement cannot continue beyond this year.

In a statement, a Drax spokesperson said: “At the request of the UK government, Drax agreed to temporarily delay the planned closure of its two coal-fired units to help bolster the UK’s energy security this winter. Our coal units will close in March 2023 when this agreement comes to an end.

“The extension was a complex staffing, logistical and engineering project after a significant reorganisation of the power station was already completed to bring almost 50 years of coal-fired generation to an end.

“With two major maintenance outages planned on our biomass units this summer, and a number of certifications expiring on the coal-fired units, the units would not be able to operate compliantly for winter 2023.”

A spokesperson for EDF said: “The two remaining units at West Burton A coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire will close as planned on 31 March 2023, in line with the agreement signed last year. The station and its workforce have fulfilled the request to have 400MW available through winter ’22/23 as an emergency standby option.

“There are a number of workforce and operational reasons that mean extending the life of West Burton A again is very challenging.

“For example, retaining suitably qualified and local personnel to ensure safe operation was a major challenge last year and, looking forward, becomes untenable as many of the workforce have stayed on well beyond planned retirement dates already.”

Uniper, which runs the Ratcliffe power station, has said that all four of its units, one of which is currently on standby for emergency purposes, have already entered into commercial contracts for next winter.

In a statement, a spokesperson said: “Uniper’s Ratcliffe power station already has capacity market agreements in place for all four units for winter 23/24, so would not be part of a separate winter contingency contract for this period.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: “Our energy supplies are safe and secure, but like last year we are exploring options to keep remaining coal-fired power stations available to provide additional back-up electricity if needed this coming winter as a contingency measure.

“Going above and beyond to ensure there are no issues next winter, we’ve written to ESO to request that they start the negotiations.

“Ultimately, the decision will be a commercial one for the coal generators and ESO will update the market in due course.”

Kathryn Porter, an energy analyst from the Watt-Logic energy consultancy, said: “The potential loss of the coal contingency is bad news for next winter.

“We have been sleepwalking into a capacity crunch. The combination of nuclear and coal closures in recent years making us vulnerable to the weather [and] in low wind conditions we are finding it increasingly difficult to meet demand.”

As well as using coal to boost supplies in an emergency, National Grid has been experimenting with paying customers to reduce demand during peak hours when margins are tight.

The lack of emergency coal on standby next winter might mean that the grid’s demand flexibility service is expanded or more heavily relied upon in order to avoid blackouts.

https://news.sky.com/story/coal-power-stations-unlikely-to-provide-emergency-energy-top-up-next-winter-12834638

We have been sleepwalking into this for years. It is laughable for DESNZ to claim that our energy supplies are safe and secure, then in the next breath saying coal is needed as a contingency!

Closure of West Burton and Drax will lose 2.2GW of capacity. The former was called up by the grid just last week during the cold snap, even though it was a windy day. So far this winter, we have avoided a really windless, cold period, but the only solution the National Grid appears to have is to pay people not to use electricity.

That can never be a proper long term solution.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

1500+ Scientists Agreed and Declared No Climate Emergency

Lembit Tork provides an answer at Quora  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Why are scientists who challenge the so-called “consensus” on climate change often called “deniers”?

Renowned climate activist G. Thunberg: “People are suffering, people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. This is all wrong”.

Accused climate denier J. Peterson: “One of the consequences of carbon dioxide overproduction is that paradoxically and contrary to all of the predictions of the environmentalists, the planet is now 15% greener than it was in the year 2000. That’s larger than the area of the United States, and it isn’t obvious to me that’s a bad thing… and it’s more than that, the most remarkable greening has occurred in semi-arid areas, and so the deserts are supposed to be expanding as the globalist globe warmed and the climate changed… yet the green has invaded semi-arid areas.”

Denier, denier, pants on fire? Call the phenomenon: Exaggeration for Action. Why? Because the political consensus is about action. It’s Consensus Fundamentalism that loves things black and white, and hates nuance. Because the lukewarmists and others like Peterson are upsetting the catastrophism that the mainstream Consensus Totalitarians need you to buy into. Because there are two kinds of modes: Thought and Action. They want action. I’d bet these Psychological Totalitarian Action Figures also need it personally, out of hidden fear of having their own suppressed doubts triggered.

So they fight back. They label challengers with something hugely ugly. The term Deniers lumps them together with Holocaust deniers. It doesn’t get uglier!

One prolific poster here calls these status quo name-callers Neoliberal Totalitarians. Whatever the name, totalitarian runs through. See if the following rings true.

The Totalitarians are of 2 categories. The first are run of the mill self-interested Monopolists, who know a good game when they see one. The second are the Ideologues, both Evil and the Misguided Do-Gooders. The evil ones seldom admit it, you have to read a lot and use your imagination. They love the sport of slavery and dominance, pure and simple. Call them Egoic Psychopaths. They live for the Power Pleasure of getting you to do unspeakable things to yourself, and the side-slapper is when you ask for more. Their curiosity is piqued by how wayward society will go. It’s perverse, it’s a tradition. Their methods are psychological and scientific. They do, because they can.

The Misguided Do-Gooders, which account for the vast majority,
actually believe they have the Solutions for the Greater Common Good.

But the Stupid People and the Democracy Delusion get in the way, even as they need to play Democracy, Transparency and Equity to win your trust. They thrive on fashionable buzzwords. Their gambit is to defer to the Experts for whom The Science Is Settled. Mostly it isn’t. Instead, the Science is weaponised. Their tactic is to get you to Trust while tweeking your Sensitivity and Guilt Buttons, resulting in Obedience and Compliance. They cannot admit their Infallibility. Ever. Because this reduces their Trust Quotient, which together with their Solemn Smiles they’ve staked everything on. So they double down. Into Tough Love and Pretzel Logic. They’ll eagerly jump through burning hoops of absurdity and hypocrisy forwards, backwards and sideways, even resort to Legalising Censorship and the Comeback of Shaming to keep up the Illusion.

If this last variant sounds like Justin Trudeau in Canada, the Dems in America,
and some Euro parliamentarians, you’re probably right.

From NoTricksZone

By Kenneth Richard on 13. March 2023

A series of paleoclimate lake reconstructions across China in recent years have failed to support the global-scale warming narrative.

Per a new lake temperature reconstruction (Li et al., 2023) from Central China, there were distinct “warm intervals during the RWP [Roman Warm Period] (403–413 CE), with a temperature 2.89°C higher than that of the mean for 1970–2000 CE, and during the MWP [Medieval Warm Period] (864–882 and 965–994 CE), when the temperature was 2.81°C higher.”

There are 8 other lake sediment reconstructions from the region (Qinghai, Gahai, Sugan, Kusai, Tiancai, Heiahi, Lugu, Cuoqia) documented in the study. None of the 8 are shown to have a modern temperature uptick that would support the claims of an unusually warm modern climate relative to past millennia.

Image Source: Li et al., 2023

From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

March 12, 2023 by oldbrew

[image credit: latinoamericarenovable.com]

Say hello to an umbrella term for outlandish climate intervention schemes, or maybe scams: SRM (solar radiation management).
– – –
Radical climate interventions — like blocking the sun’s rays — could alter the world’s weather patterns, potentially benefiting some regions of the world and harming others, says E&E News.

That possibility, climate scientists say, means any research on such methods must consider those risks and involve the countries that already bear the greatest impacts from a warming planet.

“If you’re actually talking about actively deploying technologies to alter the climate, then you need to engage all of us in the discussion,” said Andrea Hinwood, chief scientist at the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, Kenya. “And that means those who are the most vulnerable to these effects need to be able to have a say.”

The push for inclusive research comes alongside growing interest — and debate — over solar radiation management, a little understood way to avoid catastrophic climate change by injecting sunlight-blocking particles into the stratosphere or changing the density of clouds.

Climate scientists are, by and large, wary of such intervention. While limiting the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth could rapidly cool the planet, they say, such efforts wouldn’t address ocean acidification and other harms associated with burning fossil fuels, the primary cause of global warming.[Talkshop comment – so they say, offering no empirical evidence].

It’s also unclear how solar radiation management, or SRM, would affect global weather patterns, such as the monsoon rains that are crucial in some regions of the Global South. While it could ease climate impacts in one area of the world, SRM might reduce crop yields or threaten water supplies in another area.
. . .
The Global North is home to most of the experts and institutions that conduct research into climate change — and to the funding to deploy new climate technologies.

That threatens to exacerbate the growing divide between the wealthy countries that have contributed most of the emissions warming the planet and the poorer ones forced to bear the resulting impacts in the form of more extreme storms, heat, droughts and rising seas.

“If the Global South is not included, any geoengineering activity has the potential to tilt the balance of power towards nations that are already powerful,” Govindasamy Bala, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science and an author of the UNEP report, said in an email.

Full article here.